


Birthdays

by stephanericher



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Birthday, M/M, midokise week 2k15
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-08 06:26:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4294197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their birthdays are often good markers in the timeline of their relationship</p>
            </blockquote>





	Birthdays

**Author's Note:**

> midokise week day 2: birthdays

When Kise turns fifteen, he’s just realized the way he feels about Midorima, how even though he’s being tugged down the long and winding path of boredom and seemingly away from everything that was fun and interesting about basketball, Midorima’s presence brings him back to practice, gives him a little bit more urgency—he wants to pass the ball to Midorima, wants to see acknowledgement in his eyes, wants to hear the smack of the texture of the ball on Midorima’s smooth hands, the left for once without its usual bandages—and he wants to see those hands flying gracefully through the air on a shot or a block because even though half of their starters aren’t even really trying anymore Midorima’s trying twice as hard.

And that might be the reason Kise is so captivated by him, or it might be something else or nothing at all but he still feels the urge to stay as the day grow darker and the gym is almost nauseatingly sweaty after everyone else has gone home and his skin is crawling, so he watches just a few of Midorima’s hundred shots, the way his feet point in their sneakers as they lift off the floor, the same distance every time, and the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes in rhythm with that and how perfect and unbreakable it is, the eye of the storm that their basketball team is becoming, a storm that will tear itself apart—and so he heads for the showers because he’s got a birthday date with his latest girlfriend and the people from his modeling agency and he’d rather not schmooze with work people all afternoon but he can’t say no at this point.

When Midorima turns seventeen, Midorima comes out to Kanagawa to see him and they play basketball until Kise’s leg starts to hurt—he’s not going to tell Midorima but Midorima sees anyway (mostly because he’s looking for it, but even so it’s way more observant than Kise would have ever thought possible for someone like him only a few months previously) and makes him sit down and elevate it and drink water. Kise feels like shouting because it’s almost healed and it’s his birthday and today’s the day he should do stuff he normally wouldn’t.

“You don’t want to reinjure it and set back months just because you took one day too far,” Midorima says, rolling up the leg of his pants to check it out (of course Kise knows he’s been trained in first aid because he couldn’t shut up about it after he took the course but still he feels a little bit silly to be seen like this, although the feelings are mostly overridden by the sensation of Midorima’s soft, cool fingertips on his skin).

Kise smiles anyway, catching Midorima’s eye when he looks up again. “So you really do care about me, Midorimacchi.”

Midorima half-snorts; his face is flushing delicately around the edges. “Yes. I do.”

Kise sure as hell isn’t expecting anything like that; for a second his mouth is moving but he’s not sure what to say, so he just doesn’t say anything at all, even though Midorima’s fingers are a little warmer on Kise’s leg. And when Kise walks Midorima to the train station (after insisting that he can walk, whining and pleading until Midorima says it’s fine as long as he takes a cab back) Midorima lets Kise hold his hand—he won’t say anything more but that’s all the confirmation Kise needs.

By Kise’s eighteenth birthday they’ve started going out, seeing each other on weekends and whenever Kise’s jobs let him go back to Tokyo (which is less and less now that he’s working out for NBA scouts and his responsibilities to the basketball team are growing—Midorima always tells Kise to work less and that they’ll see each other when they can, but he’s working more and more himself what with applying to college and all). But even though Kise’s birthday falls on a weekday and he doesn’t have work, he manages to get practice to end early and hops on a train to Tokyo. He’d told Midorima not to come and meet him, so he’s going to see Midorima himself.

Midorima’s sister answers the door; she knows him well enough by now to just point upstairs and let him through. Midorima grumbles something about how he’s supposed to be the one to surprise Kise on his birthday, not the other way around, before he presents him with gifts that of course he’d bought and prepared anyway because he’s Midorima—bottles of Kise’s favorite brand of mineral water and a book on basketball stars of the early twentieth century (which is so very Midorima but Kise loves it already) and since Midorima’s parents get home late for dinner and his sister’s downstairs doing homework, it’s not hard to convince Midorima to take his clothes off (especially because neither of them can really pretend they want to do anything other than touch each other at this point). It’s warm and perfect and the kind of birthday present that the heroes of cheap erotica get—but it’s better than good enough for Kise.

They spend Midorima’s nineteenth birthday apart; Kise’s in Chicago doing media appearances for his new team and studying English and looking for an apartment and Midorima’s just getting into the thick of things in college—even when Kise can spare a few minutes in a hotel room Midorima’s sleeping or studying or in class or in the lab, and when he texts Kise back it’s always when Kise’s busy himself. Kise makes sure to stay up late so they can have ten minutes’ worth of actual conversation before he falls asleep and Midorima has to go, and Midorima’s voice is soft but short on the other end and Kise wonders for the first time (but only to himself) if maybe this long-distance thing isn’t going to work out for them.

Kise spends his twentieth birthday back home; his season’s long since been over and he’s still reeling from the first-round playoff loss. True, it was his first year but it seems horribly unfair when Aomine and Murasakibara and Kagami and even Papa Mbaye Siki are still all in the playoffs with their teams after his unceremonious exit, and even though by the time his birthday rolls around they’re all done it’s still a little sore with him.

It’s even worse that Midorima doesn’t want to talk about basketball much, or anything else other than his lab work or where he’s going to medical school or how damn busy he is. Kise finds himself rolling his eyes even though he knows Midorima works hard, because it’s not a competition about who’s working harder and if Midorima thinks basketball is so much easier there’s no reason he shouldn’t do it himself (and even if he’s talking about the time commitment, during the season Kise spends all his time either on the court or making the rounds in the press or sleeping, and he’s even less available than Midorima is now). Of course, it’s not that simple; these things rarely are. And it’s not that Midorima annoys Kise all the time, because he’s still beautiful and captivating and wonderful (on the occasions that he does let Kise take up a few of his precious hours) but it feels more and more like this is a chore and they’re both too stubborn to let go, that they both love each other or at least used to and are trying half-heartedly to make that enough. It’s hard enough during the season, with Kise’s travel and practice and games and an entire ocean and so many time zones between them but it doesn’t get any easier when they’re in the same city, and it’s maybe even more frustrating.

By Midorima’s twenty-first it’s clear they can’t do this anymore. It’s bittersweet like coffee with just a little sugar but not enough to mask it, walking by the harbor hand in hand. To Midorima’s credit he does not apologize too profusely—he looks as if he wants to every few seconds but holds back, for Kise or for himself or for both of them but it doesn’t matter this far down the line.

It’s like the closing seconds of a game Kise thought would be winnable, a game that they had had a slim lead in a long time ago (but perhaps had been doomed before it started) and that maybe they could recapture it, a game where they were on the upswing but cut off by the clock, a game where he can throw a three at the buzzer and they’ll still be twenty behind. Kise does his best not to cry when they’re done having sex, and it’s that for the first time in months that Midorima doesn’t get out of bed and fight sleep and go to his books, that he looks at Kise and holds him that makes the dam break. Fuck, this is so perfect—but this is a once-in-a-very-long-while thing and it’s because this is the last time that Midorima’s finally prioritizing Kise over school and because it’s the last time that the weeks until Kise leaves Tokyo again seem so long and he can hold back the thought of Midorima’s endless tests and labs and worksheets and textbooks.

“You know,” he says in the still hours of the morning, “if you ever want to go with basketball—”  
“You’ll be the first to know,” Midorima says, and his voice is not too quiet to hide the cracks. “But please don’t wait unnecessarily.”

On Midorima’s twenty-second birthday, Kise sends him a text message. The reply is a little bit awkward, but it’s so Midorima that Kise almost wants to cry again (and he sends back that it’s not late because he had to wait until it was midnight central time and it’s a little ways behind Japan and when Midorima tells him to just die it almost feels like high school again except it really, really doesn’t).

On Kise’s twenty-third birthday, he gets a phone call. It’s three in the morning but he recognizes the number so he answers anyway, not bothering to even sit up or keep his eyes open.

“Ryouta? Are you asleep? I’m sorry.”

Hearing his name from Midorima’s lips, even through a telephone and with no context whatsoever, puts half a grin on his face.

“Mm. It’s okay.”

“I can call back later.”

“You woke me up already,” Kise says (and this feels like a happy reprise of their angry refrains that had become the norm when they were still together only the roles are reversed because it’s not Kise calling Midorima during his precious two-hour nap and if school was killing him so badly, Kise had said, why not quit—to which he usually got a reply of the beeps that signalled the end of the call).

“I’ve decided. I’m not going to medical school; I’ve decided I’ll play basketball instead.”

“What?” says Kise, propping his head up with one arm (there’s no way he heard that right).

“I’m declaring for the draft. Are you going deaf? I told you not to listen to so much loud music.”

Kise would bet a year’s salary that Midorima’s blushing on the other end; that tone of voice is far too familiar.

“You’re declaring for the draft!” Kise says, his voice almost becoming a squeal as he grins and rolls over, clutching the phone against his cheek.

“Anyway,” Midorima says, “I did promise you’d be the first to know. And, ah. Happy birthday, Ryouta.”

And it’s been almost two years, but fuck—Kise’s already fallen way back in (or he’d never really gotten out to start with). He listens to Midorima’s breathing until he drifts back to sleep, Midorima’s voice registering in the distance saying something he can’t make out as he closes his eyes that kind of sounds like “Did you fall asleep?”—but he wakes up smiling with the imprint of the phone on his cheek.


End file.
